The plane arrived in three large boxes. The contents are very well protected from shipping damage. There is a layer of 1/4" masonite in between the outer box and inner box so you can pretty much stand on the boxes without damaging the contents.

The closeup of the wing shows that the styrofoam was worn but there was no damage to the edge wing.

Here's a few shots of the power system. The Rimfire is mounted using the Great Planes GPMG1275 standoff kit.

I've added three 470uf capacitors adjacent to the ESC to reduce ripple because of the long leads to the battery pack and the arming switch which is in between the batteries and ESC.

The arming switch is an Emcotec SPS 120/240. It is a solid-state switch which means no spark when you plug in the batteries or arm the system. When the magnet is in place all power is removed from the ESC so there is no chance of accidental starts. The ESC is armed by removing the magnetic switch from the socket in the side of the fuselage.

I chose to run the servos from the main flight packs. I know I might get flamed on this choice, but I personally can't see and advantage of carrying around another pair of batteries when I've already got five pounds of lipos onboard.

For redundancy I split the control surfaces in half. One Castle BEC Pro runs one receiver, left aileron, left elevator, and rudder. The other BEC Pro runs a second receiver, right aileron, right elevator, and throttle.

I've had good luck with Futaba gear so I chose R6208SB receivers, BLS156HVs on the ailerons and elevators, and a BLS157HV on the rudder. There is no problem binding multiple receivers to a Futaba transmitter.

Important note: If you do decide to do this on your own setup, make sure that the receiver that runs the ESC is connected to the BEC whose black wire is connected to the same point as the ESC's power black wire. In other words, if you connect the black wire of the throttle receiver's BEC to the jumper between the two 6S packs you are going to create a dead short across one of the batteries.

The location of the back of the prop is at the minimum recommended in the Aeroworks manual. That pushed the motor out so far that part of it extended past the cowl. I needed to Dremel the hole bigger to accommodate the motor's size.

The cowl also had an opening precut on the bottom for gas-motor cooling. I added a balsa deflector about 1.5" back to force the air up and around the Rimfire.

I'm still up in the air on deciding if I want to run a spinner. It sure would look better with one, but I really like the cooling ability of the motor just hanging out there.

Here is a log of my second flight with a Xoar 25x12 electric prop. Peak power was 5600 watts. I will be testing a 26x15 carbon electric prop later this week. I'm expecting better power and efficiency with that setup.

Instead of using four screws to access the canopy I added guide tubes so that you can insert rods through the fuse and canopy tabs. The rods are secured by pushing a piece of fuel tubing over the pointy side.

I've had several flights with the 26x15 carbon fiber prop. My timer is set for 8 minutes and I'm coming down with about 40% left in the packs. Peak load while in the air is 134 amps and 5521 watts. Worst case ripple voltage is about 4% so adding the extra capacitors worked out well.

I decided to add a carbon fiber spinner since it looks much better that way. The motor is still coming down cool after a flight even with the spinner blocking most of the direct airflow.

Power is incredible with the 26x15 prop and the motor and batteries are staying cool so I'm going to stick with that configuration.

Eight minutes is going to be the longest flight time I can expect with 7500mah on board. I was out this past weekend and hit LVC on my approach after an aggressive flight. My timer went off at 8 minutes but I had to wait for someone else to clear the runway so I was up about 10 minutes. I was on final and I realized I had no power and wasn't going to make the runway so I throttled completely down then back up and got one last (unexpectedly large) burst of power and I ended up overshooting the runway. The gear bent and the wheel pants got dinged up but luckily no other damage.

I have teh same plane and motor. I didnt notice a distance in the manual (I guess I was in too much of a hurry). I ran the Turnighy 160 amp ESC and 2 turnigy 6S 25C 6000 MAH batteries in series in 4mm bullets with 10 gage wire series connector and a 24x10 Carbon fiber prop. My first flight was yesterday and went well. 2nd flight my ESC melted and blew the negative lead off of the ESC. any suggestions for the next ESC?

where did you get the spinner (I can't find one big enough) and how does it attach? Where did yo uget teh capaciters and magnetic switch? And thanks for posting this. Wish I had seen it before I built mine.

1) The Rimfire with the right prop will hit the 160 amp mark. I personally would not push a Turnigy ESC right up to its rated amps. Instead I would use 80% of the 160A rating as a comfortable maximum value.

2) With your 24x10 your current draw should be OK as long as you are not running more than 12s. But higher than that could be a problem.

3) Depending on the location of the ESC in the cowl it may not be getting good airflow. I ended up installing a balsa "deflector" to get the air moving across mine. My ESC logs temperature so it was easy to compare before and after in-flight readings to see if my deflector worked.

4) You very likely have too much ripple voltage on your battery leads. Ripple is caused by extending the battery leads, poor connectors, and/or insufficient battery current capability. I had to add capacitors to the ESC input leads to reduce my ripple to a safe level. Do a google search for "ESC ripple voltage" to get some good background on why you need to worry about this. Ignore anyone who says it doesn't matter. On these high voltage, high amperage rigs it definately does matter.

Considering the $$$ that you probably already have in that setup my best suggestion is to switch to the Castle HV160 and add their CAPPACK capacitor pack to the battery inputs of the ESC.

If you do choose the Castle ESC then also pick up the Castle-Link USB device. It is only a few bucks and allows you to see the ESC log data on your PC. The log is invaluable for determining if you have a temperature, ripple, or overcurrent problem. You can also tune important parameters like the LVC (I changed mine to soft slow down instead of hard shut-off). You will probably also want to use the Castle-link to change the throttle settings to fixed endpoints instead of auto.

If you want to go the cheaper route and put in another Turnigy ESC, at least add capacitors across the battery leads. You can pick up suitable capacitors at digikey.com. I recommend that you add four part # P12401-ND across the battery leads right next to the ESC. Don't just run down to Radio Shack for the caps. You need low ESR caps, not the generic ones you'll find there.

With the higher amp draw setups like these, you also need to be concerned with the choice of connectors and wire as well. I used the Castle 6.5mm bullets everywhere I could. I even unsoldered the factory connectors off of the Rimfire and replaced them with the Castle ones. I used EC5 connectors for the batteries instead of the Castle bullets because I wanted zero chance of connecting things wrong and creating a spectacular short circuit. They are great connectors and you can even get #8 wire into them. (But for the most part adding a a couple extra capacitors will offset the ripple effects of smaller wire and connectors so don't start rewiring your plane.)

My Emcotec SPS cutoff switch was purchased from hkm-models.com. Emcotec is located in Germany and HKM was the only US distributor I could find. (HKM seems like a "one man band w/ Paypal" but I have ordered from them a few times and everything shows up.)

The 4 1/8" spinner and props were purchased from espritmodel.com. They have fiberglass and CF ones that screw to an aluminum backplate that work very well with the Rimfire. They were also the only place I could find that had the Xoar 24X14 electric.

The #8 silicone wire and EC5 connectors were purchased from epbuddy.com. I used to run Deans but the first time you solder a large wire to an EC5 you'll never want to use anything else.

And if you're not already doing so, consider using a small torch to solder your bullet connectors. The extra heat virtually eliminates any chance of having a poor solder joint.

Let me know if you have any other questions and I'll do my best to help out.

Since you are going with the Castle ESC I have a couple other suggestions for you...

While you are programming it set the brake to 10%. The drag will slow the plane on downlines or landing when you cut move the throttle to 0%. Don't configure more than 10-20% because you'll completely stop the prop from spinning and lose the effect.

You should also manually set the LVC instead of having it auto-detect the number of cells. That way you can never get into a situation where if you put in a pack that isn't fully charged it detects too few cells. I usually set mine up somewhere between 39V and 42V depending on how low you are comfortable with and the voltage drop of your pack at load.

I ordered the Castle stuff. I see the series leads you used were 8 awg, what about the castle ESC and the battery leads? One of the guys I work with doesnt think teh 10 awg can handle the current but the ESC I had was 10 awg. Do you have any thoughts?

The HV160 ESC comes with 8 gauge wire. I have parallel packs so one pack is not handling the entire current load so their reduced wire size isn't an issue.

10 gauge will work but isn't ideal. It will get hot at full throttle but not hot enough to melt silicone insulation. And it's not like you'll fly WOT the whole flight.

After your first flights with the new ESC download the log data and check the ripple voltage. If it is 7% of the pack voltage or less then you are OK. If not add more capacitors or change to #8 wire and/or heavier connectors.

Well the Castle 160 did much better. I had a prop strike and broke my motor shaft. HZ is out of stock so I am looking for more motor. I want to be unlimited but with the 23 and 24 inch prop I was only pulling 85 amps or so. I am looking at the Turnighy 100 cc motor but it has a 6 bolt IC and I am not sure how that works with normal propellers. Do you have to buy a special prop for that type of shaft? one that has six small holes drilled around teh main shaft?

I've had a few prop strikes myself. There really isn't a whole lot of clearance with a 26" prop so I switched over to a Xoar PJN 24x14. Plenty of ground clearance but not as much power as I was looking for. I think I'm going to go back to the Xoar 25x12 for a while. The best performance IMO was definitely the 26X15 carbon fiber prop at 12s though.

The Rimfire is rated for 15S. I may need to put in a Jeti Spin ESC since that is rated up to 14S if I stick with the smaller diameter props.